Thursday, June 14, 2012

F.T.A. (1972)

A somewhat interesting
artifact from the Vietnam War era, this documentary comprises filmed
performances by a roving troupe of antiwar activists who toured small venues
located near U.S. Army bases. The reason the picture got a theatrical release,
and the reason it survives to this day via DVD and other formats, is the
impressive wattage of the key participants. The major players are actors Jane
Fonda and Donald Sutherland, who also produced the picture (with director
Francine Parker). So, even though the skits captured in the film are not
particularly inspired, it’s fascinating to see the shag-coiffed “Hanoi Jane” at
the height of her controversial campaign against the war. Her passion burns
through the screen, even if it sometimes reads as naïve stridency. It’s also
compelling to watch the faces of the soldiers in the audience, because one can
only imagine what was going through the minds of these young men as they
watched a revue nominally titled “Free the Army” but really known as “Fuck the
Army.” Most of the sketches, which were written by a cabal of satirists,
feature obvious lampooning of military bureaucracy with an undercurrent of
humanistic revolt against the bloodshed of a pointless war. Yet not everything
in the movie strives for humor. In a particularly arresting sequence, Sutherland reads aloud from Dalton
Trumbo’s legendary 1939 antiwar novel Johnny
Got His Gun, the story of a World War I soldier wishing for death after
losing his facial features and all of his limbs. Elsewhere, folksinger Holly
Near performs tunes typical of the earnest era in which the film was made.
However, perhaps the movie’s greatest claim to fame is its obscurity. The week F.T.A. opened in America, Fonda traveled
to North Vietnam for a trip many perceived as traitorous, immediately making
her the right wing’s Public Enemy No. 1. Buckling to pressure,
American-International Pictures pulled the film from theaters before it
completed its first week onscreen.